Random inspiration

Cellini made various experiments to find out how best to use the materials nature had provided him with, including casting a small oval medal with the figure of a greyhound.

The Saluki, also known as the Royal Dog of Egypt and Persian Greyhound, is one of the oldest known breeds of domesticated dog. Historically, Salukis were used by nomadic tribes for hunting.

In the last decade and a half of his life, Romanino painted a handful of modestly scaled but intensely felt devotional works. These include several Crucifixions and, most notably, this Ecce Homo. The expressionism that had been so pronounced in the 1530s and early 1540s is lessened in this grave scene and replaced by a subtler emotion.

Mattia Preti, a pupil of Guercino, became the leader of the Naples school of painting after Ribera. He was a prolific painter who worked in Rome, Naples and Malta, where he was knighted and where he probably painted this work.

Nature is merely the backdrop for this carefully rehearsed performance. Although the lady is just putting the tuning key to her harp, the picture is almost static. The scattered accents of colour, such as red, seem to act as a counterpoint to her balanced pose. The harp and part of the stone socle may be intended as bearers of elegiac atmosphere, but first and foremost they are stabilizing compositional elements. Sentimentality and Neoclassicism are found hand in hand here. A clear and stringent compositional architecture is hidden behind an air of dreamy softness. The concept of the experienced portraitist is cloaked in the guise of chance inspiration.

Similar compositions (borrowed from Andrea Solario) by the artist are owned by the Doria Gallery in Rome and the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.

Alluding to the source of St Cecilia’s inspiration, the spandrels of each side of the archivolts show the four evangelists and two prophets, while her purity and sagacity is underlined by the presence of two of the Wise Virgins.

The detail represents St Mark.

Matthias Stom is believed to have been a pupil of Gerrit van Honthorst in Utrecht, before going to Rome in 1628. He mainly painted genre pieces and biblical subjects. His works differ from Honthorst’s in that the faces of his subjects are more highly elaborated and have broader features and more furrows. His paintings make use of a warmer palette, dominated by reds and yellows. While in Rome Stom painted several genre pieces like the present work.

This portrait was executed when the sculptor Charles Antoine Callamard (1776-1812) was barely twenty-five old, winner of the Prix du Rome in sculpture in 1797. When it was exhibited at the Salon des Artistes Vivants in 1801, the miniature drew the attention of the critics, who praised the unusual delicacy of its execution and the veracity of the sitter’s feature.

This is the masterpiece of Ghiberti, who worked on it for 27 years, lavishing on it all the richness of his imagination, combined with a fine sense of composition and profound knowledge of the modeller’s art. Michelangelo defined the door as fit to be the “gates of Paradise”.

The door, a universally admired masterpiece, has ten panels depicting Biblical scenes. At the centre of the door at left is the self-portrait of Ghiberti. The door’s original gilding has recently been recovered from beneath the patina formed over the centuries. It was badly damaged by Florence’s flood in 1966 when the waters of the Arno reached a height of more than 180 cm. After restoration it was moved to the museum of the Cathedral and substituted by a copy.

The Portrait of a Young Man with an Apple (1505) in the Uffizi has been associated with the paintings representing St Michael and St George. It is difficult to perceive the hand of the artist in the face which, although beautifully drawn, lacks the physiognomic characteristics which typify Raphael’s subjects. But the overall attention to the analytical effects of Flemish art leads us to attribute the work to Raphael, since his attention was turned to the production of this school precisely in these years. Furthermore, the compositional harmony which is a principal element of Raphael’s art is visible in the compact forms of the solidly conceived portrait.

The subject has been associated with Francesco Maria Della Rovere, and possibly correctly: the portrait reached Florence with the Della Rovere patrimony in 1631 on the marriage of Vittoria Della Rovere to the future Grand Duke Ferdinand II.

This painting probably was painted shortly after Schalcken’s return from England. The bosomy woman who is in the focus of her eager admirer’s attention is probably a prostitute. Consequently, the man’s gift is intended to purchase her temporary affections.

Although sometimes referred to as a Mater Dolorosa, this is not strictly speaking an image of the anguished mother of Christ meditating upon his Passion. Rather it is a less specific devotional painting of the Virgin Mary, ultimately deriving from Byzantine prototypes, intended for private prayer. A version of the painting, usually accepted as autograph (bearing a retouched signature) is in the Prado, Madrid. The Virgin’s expression differs slightly there and she has a gentle smile on her lips.

Gerard David interpreted with great originality the theme of Rest during the Flight to Egypt. The Virgin and Child are placed in the centre in a landscape. A tiny depiction of the Holy Family on its way to Egypt can be seen in the background on the right. The influence of Renaissance art, especially Leonardo, is clearly visible, notably in the use of sfumato and the atmospheric variations of the background.

The present work, a small-scale terracotta, depicts the mythological story of the abduction of Ganymede. Jupiter, who despite his wife Juno’s complaints could not help give in to the occasional crush, fell head over heels for the young Ganymede, the most beautiful of mortals. While Ganymede was tending sheep on mount Ida, near Troy, Jupiter turned himself into an eagle – his characteristic animal – and abducted him to serve as cup-bearer in Olympus.

Juan de Flandes was trained in the Ghent-Bruges school, and very little is known about him. The only indications of his early life are his style as a painter and the generic name given him in Spain. Even his twenty-three years in Castile are sparsely documented and known mostly through contracts and official records. He is first recorded in the payrolls of Isabella’s servants in 1496, and stayed on at court until her death eight years later. Little remains of this period of activity, except for the altarpiece of St John the Baptist, executed for the Charterhouse of Miraflores (surviving panels are in the Museum van der Bergh, Antwerp, Museum of Art, Cleveland, Mus�e d’art et d’histoire, Geneva and private collection) and part of the magnificent work of art known as the Polyptych of Isabella the Catholic. This polyptych originally comprised forty-seven small panels (each measuring about 21 x 16 centimetres). Approximately twenty-seven survive, of which two were executed by Michel Sittow.

The Temptation of Christ, one of the surviving panels of the polyptych, reveals Juan de Flandes’s origin in the art of Hugo van der Goes and his follower the Master of Mary Burgundy, whose precise, delicate style of miniature painting he adapted to works in oil on panel.

The represented saints are probably Sts John the Evangelists and Magdalen.